It was a matter of time. Jazz knew the risks before moving to Gotham - The constant villain attacks were the most notable thing about the city! That, and the Wayne Enterprises' enormous tower propriety of the elusive Waynes, the richest family in the place.

And the rain. Gotham was very gloomy.

Fortunately for Jazz she kind of liked the rain, truly; she enjoyed watching the rain fall and staying in bed five more minutes listening to the rain fall outside.

That was the magic word: Outside. It was looking like it was going to pour heavily and she didn't want to get caught outside when it finally did.

"Miss, you better go home." The nice lady that had been ringing her purchase looked nervously at the glass door, but she wasn't looking at the dark clouds.

In the distance, there was an explosion.

Ah, just like home, she thought, but decided not to voice her comment. Non-Gothamites weren't used to the chaos of constant fighting and explosions and villain shenanigans; but she was an Amity Parker through and through, and ghost fights didn't have anything to envy from Gotham.

Well, maybe she envied the ginormous donations that WE gave the city for rebuilding after each fight.

She supposed that it was a rich people thing. And yet, Vlad didn't donate anything to the city he was the Mayor of. Maybe he had to get a few pointers from this Bruce fella.

"Sure." Jazz quickly packed her juice packs and chocolate cookies she had been craving for a quiet Saturday afternoon.

Another explosion. There it goes her quiet afternoon.

She ran towards her apartment building, not because she cared about getting all wet or that it would be messy or she could get sick - but because at the end of the street she could see a giant plant sprouting from the concrete, followed by the roar of an engine… wait for it… and there it was the Batmobile!

She really wanted to stop and watch the fight, but Jazz could almost hear her brother's voice in her head complaining about how dangerous it was to stay in a ghost fight and how stupid were the people that refused to take cover.

Jazz was smart, so she simply accepted that living another day was worth walking away from her first actual Batman sighting in Gotham.

A shadow flew over her head, startling her. She looked up, heart in her throat, fearing that Poison Ivy (who else would attack with those signature thorny vines) had somehow gotten to her position faster than expected. But her eyes zeroed on the blue and black suit of Bludhaven's protector - who, if her study of Gotham's heroes was accurate (it was, she memorized everything she got her hands into), usually came over to help Batman regularly.

As she saw him jump from rooftop to rooftop with such a grace that only could come from years of doing this job, Jazz marveled at the fact that this superhero was only human, like her. It was humbling, in a way, and exciting to know that these people that did amazing things for this city were humans.

She loved her brother a lot and she was so proud of him, but she was adult enough to admit that she sometimes felt envious about his powers and how much he could do with them. Not that she desired to go through what he did or make a wish to a ghost genie or anything (No, Tucker wasn't going to live that down); but still, she felt so… powerless next to her brother.

Did Batman feel like that next to the Justice League? Did Superman or Wonder Woman make him feel powerless?

She shook her head. Batman was an obsessed man with a lot of time and money in his hands, someone that used technology to compensate for that powerlessness, even before he founded the Justice League. She never took interest in her parents' work, despite knowing how some of their inventions worked; it was Danny's thing to tinker with the electronics and the science part of things. She was satisfied with only knowing how to shoot and how to use the Fenton Peeler.

A scream close to her made her focus back on her surroundings. Jazz turned, finding a group of children running around a building corner and towards the next alley to their left. She looked from the other side of the almost deserted road how five children, homeless, she guessed by their ratty clothes, dirty faces and thin frames, were running away from something.

She saw the man round the corner with a small limp almost at the same time that another explosion made the floor tremble. Pamela was angry and Jasmine knew she'd have to deal with it when Batman managed to get her back to Arkham - but right now her eyes were glued to the children trying to hide in the alley, which was a dead end if her memory was correct.

A motorbike rushed past her before drifting into a stop midway between the fight with Ivy and her. The person who got off the bike was the infamous Red Hood. And he was looking at her.

She didn't feel fear as she saw the shining red helmet or the menacing frame of the hero. Antihero? She was aware of the criminal activities that this man was involved in; but everyone she talked with had something good to say about him. "He gets Gotham" or "He saved my sister from her abusive boyfriend. Bless his soul" and her favorite "I saw him helping a kid with his homework once". Someone like that couldn't be evil - she didn't agree with his methods, but she knew that people didn't do things without a reason behind it.

"Girl, go home." Red Hood said, looking at her. She expected the mechanical voice, but the effect was different when she heard it in real life.

Jazz blinked, her eyes going to the place where she saw the kids clearly hiding and the approaching menacing man, who conveniently decided to mask his furious face and conceal his limp. He clearly had seen the vigilante, but was hoping the other didn't see him.

The young woman turned back to the man in the motorbike to point at what was happening to see if Red Hood could do one act of heroism before going to help Batman; but to her surprise, since she didn't hear him make a sound, the hero was too far from her to hear her or even get to the children on time. He probably didn't see what was happening, too focused on the bigger threat down the street.

Okay. Jazz took a deep breath. She got this. She had trained with Team Phantom, she had talked her mom into teaching her as much as she could without making her suspicious that it wasn't just an excuse to spend time together. She got this.

Carefully and slowly, she tried to make her way to the other side of the road. The menacing man was getting into the alley and didn't see or hear her approach. Perfect. Now she needed to plan her next steps.

"Come out and play, children!" The man's voice was hoarse, a chain smoker, maybe. "I won't hurt you, I promise."

Jazz stopped herself from scoffing. Yeah, right. She didn't know who this man was, but anyone who chased homeless children and pulled stuff like this didn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

She got to the mouth of the alley without getting discovered, her eyes looking for a weapon, her mind in overdrive. She had never fought people outside of ghost fights - in Amity, normal crime was low and Team Phantom didn't usually get involved in a lot of brawls. And she always had her brother to back her up…

Jazz's eyes met one of the children's, and the fear and desperation she saw in them struck something in her soul. She had to help. She had the skills, she had to. At that moment she understood why random people decided to wear a costume and fight crime in this city.

The young woman steeled her nerves and smiled as calmly as she could at the kid. She got this.

Jazz jumped at the man's back, successfully landing on him to keep him pinned on the ground. Her victory was short since the man was stronger than she expected and turned them both around, punching blindly to whoever had attacked him. She dodged a few hits, but one of them got her forearm when she blocked. Ouch.

She jumped back, closer to the street and away from the children. Briefly, one of them got out of hiding to point her towards the left - she risked looking away from the dangerous man and saw what the kid wanted her to see. She smirked. Yeah, she could do this.

"You slut!" The man growled, jumping at her. She didn't think, sidestepping him was easy. Huh. Humans were slower than ghosts. "You will regret getting involved in this."

She ignored him, leaning down to pick up the baseball bat abandoned next to a dumpster, eyes fixed on the man's every movement.

"That thing won't help you, girlie." His smile showed crooked and yellow teeth. "My buddies are coming and you will be fucked."

No doubt if his 'buddies' got here, if there was someone coming at all, she would not be able to deal with all of them. She had to make this quick.

Without commenting on the man's words (banter was Danny's thing and he reminded her every time how she sucked at it), she took a step closer, measuring the distance between them and the weight of the bat. Deep breath. She could do this.

The man got tired of waiting and lunged, fists ready to hit her.

Now.

The woman sidestepped one more time and swung the bat with everything she got. She heard a crack, but didn't stop to check if it came from the man's skull or from her weapon of choice. The man slumped to the ground, a scream stuck in his throat.

She and the kids waited for a moment to see if he would move or try to get up, but when he didn't, they let out a relieved sigh.

"You have a mean swing, miss." One of the youngest said as she struggled to exit from under a pile of cardboard boxes. Jazz smiled at the kid.

"I had practice." She put the bat under one arm and traced back her steps to just outside the alley, where her forgotten purchases waited for her. When she turned, the whole group of children were looking at her with awe. She looked back at her bag. "You guys hungry?"

The two youngest nodded, eyes glued to the plastic bag; but the other three eyed her with distrust. Right. She might not have been the first adult that offered them food, and she tried not to think if those adults wanted something in return.

"Look, I know this is not a three course meal or anything, but I promise it's free if you guys want it."

Just to make a point, she put the bag with the cookies and the juice packs on the ground and took a step back, nodding at it with the smile still in place. She just wanted to make sure the kids got the food and went to a safe place since-

A scream reverberated in the distance, probably Ivy losing the battle, she hoped, followed by another earthquake induced by gigantic plants sprouting from the concrete. Jazz winced, keeping her balance while the trembling shook everything.

"Miss!"

She looked up, finding terrified eyes looking at something behind her.

She turned just in time to dodge a blade aimed at her chest, the tip instead slashing her shoulder. It wasn't deep but the blood always frightened children, so the little girl screamed at the sight. Jazz flinched at the pain, but her arm was okay, so she grabbed the bat once one and prepared to fight her way out of a knife fight.

"You bitch!" This was a new guy, but he probably was from the same group or gang of the one she knocked out already. So he had friends after all. Not a good thing.

The man lunged at her again, but Jazz couldn't step away to dodge since the children were behind her. Not good. She tried to swing the bat at the wide man with more yellow teeth, but he saw her move and caught her weapon at the last moment, twisting it and throwing it away from her hands.

Great.

Jazz widened her stance and prepared her fists. The knife glinted in the brief sunlight escaping through the thick clouds, reminding her that this was dangerous and could go wrong really fast. Fortunately this wasn't her first knife fight. Did a sword fight count as a knife fight? Pandora tried to include swords in their training, insisting that it was the basic a warrior needed to know.

But she didn't have a sword. Or a knife. Also, she was used to training with people that could fly.

"I will cut your tongue so you can't scream, girlie."

She didn't answer him, squaring to dodge the next attack from the man. He shoulder throbbed and Jazz knew that adrenaline wouldn't numb the pain forever. Still, she waited.

As expected, the wide man got tired of waiting and swung at her, knife first. She was waiting for him, leaning back and grabbing his hand after the blade was safely away from her face, stepping around him as she squeezed his wrist, forcing him to drop the knife. She kicked it away.

Now she had an advantage over him, she knew. The man also knew, the panic settling in his eyes as he found himself unable to stop her from kicking his legs from under him to trip him into the floor, her iron grip on his hand twisting it painfully behind his back.

The man screamed.

When he tried to get up, Jazz stepped on his back, putting all of her weight on him and successfully immobilizing him.

"I don't like hurting people," She finally said. "But you went for the kids and for an unarmed woman. That's not very nice."

She yanked, successfully twisting the man's arm out of its socket. Her would-be-attacker screamed louder, but it was drowned by the thunder announcing another wave of heavy rain that was going to fall. When he kept on sobbing on the floor and didn't make another move to get up, Jazz decided to let him go.

The kids were looking at her with wide eyes.

"You guys still here? Go!" She pushed back the hair that escaped her low ponytail with all the action. Ouch. Right, she had an injured shoulder. "Take the bag and go, it's going to-"

"Nobody moves!" Another male voice, this time accompanied by a soft click.

She knew what she would find - this new third rate goon had a gun. She didn't like guns. Normal guns, the kind that send people to the other side with one click. She hated how people used them indiscriminately. On women. On children. On the innocent.

Jasmine put her hands up and turned around slowly, trying to subtly shield the kids with her body.

She got this.